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The Healthcare Identifiers Service (HI Service) is a national system for uniquely identifying individuals, healthcare provider individuals and healthcare provider organisations. Healthcare Identifiers allow us to have confidence that the correct information is associated with the correct individual at the point of care.

The HI Service is required for many aspects of Digital Health including Electronic Prescribing, Secure Messaging or My Health Record. Get started below.

Overview

Before building digital health functionality (such as electronic prescribing, secure messaging or My Health Record) your software must first be able to identify the three participants in a healthcare event; the patient, the healthcare provider individual, and the healthcare provider organisation. The HI Service stores identifiers for these three participants. The HI Service Business to Business (B2B) Gateway exposes SOAP based web services which allow your software to search for identifiers for these parties.

The HI Service consists of 3 types of identifiers;

  • Individual Healthcare Identifier (IHI), assigned to healthcare consumers. Every Australian with a Medicare Card or Department of Veteran’s Affairs (DVA) card is automatically assigned an IHI. Consumers who aren’t eligible for Medicare or DVA can apply for an IHI using the IHI service in myGov.
  • Healthcare Provider Identifier–Individual - (HPI-I), assigned to healthcare providers such as GPs, pharmacist, nurse or psychiatrists. Every healthcare provider registered with AHPRA is automatically assigned an HPI-I. Healthcare providers who aren’t AHPRA registered may be eligible to apply for an HPI-I.
  • Healthcare Provider Identifier–Organisation (HPI-O), assigned to organisations such as general practices, pharmacies and hospitals. Healthcare provider organisations must register for an HPI-O.
my-health-record-b2b-hi-services

If you are new to the HI Service and wish to register and begin development then please follow our developer guides below. If you would like to understand more about the Test and Go Live process then please view our overview here: HI Service - Test and Go Live

Developer Guides

Refer below to access all Developer Guides including: 

If you are connecting your software to the My Health Record system then you may wish to follow our combined developer guides here:  

Healthcare Identifiers Integration Toolkit

The HI Integration Toolkit is a collection of sample code available in both .NET and Java. This toolkit is available for download via this website, GitHub and NuGet. If you are following the HI Service Developer Guides, you will be provided direction to download the .NET NuGet package in Guide 1. The Healthcare Identifiers Integration Toolkit contains libraries for B2B connectivity to the Healthcare Identifiers service, used to search for IHI, HPI-Is and HPI-Os. For more information refer to:   

Sample Code available from GitHub

Java based sample code equivalent to the dotnet code base. We are working on providing updates to the 'clinical-document-library' for existing and new CDA document types. Other clients are deemed sufficient as there have been no API changes.

Related content

Getting started education modules

If you are interested in integrating your software with the My Health Record system, we recommend starting by reviewing our education modules.

HI Service conformance profile update – invitation to information session

Announcement

The Healthcare Identifiers (HI) Service Conformance Profile provides requirements for software developers who want to integrate with the HI Service. We are planning to update the conformance profile and invite you to an information session on Tuesday 26 November at 2pm (AEDT) to explain the proposed changes. This will be followed by a four-week feedback period.

Developer guides

HI Service - Registration and Certificates

In this guide, you will Register as a developer for the HI Service, Request Test Certificates and Test Environment Data, Install the Test Certificates locally, Import Certificates in CIS Software.

HI Service - IHI Lookup

Your software will need to conduct lookups for Individual Healthcare Identifiers (IHIs) for patients. 

HI Service - IHI Lookup - Test Cases

After successfully executing the IHI Lookup, it is important to modify your implementation to meet the Test Cases for the Use Cases we have built to UC.010 and UC.015.

HI Service - Test and Go Live

All products developed, or updated, to connect with the Healthcare Identifiers Service (HI) Service are required to undergo testing before production access is granted.

HI Service - FAQs

The following frequently asked questions relate to the use of Healthcare Identifiers in Health Software Systems.

NASH SHA-2 Certificates - Developer Guide

This Developer Guide is for the use of developers whose products connect to the Healthcare Identifiers (HI) Service, My Health Record, Electronic Prescribing and Secure Messaging with a National Authentication Service for Health (NASH) PKI Certificate.

Resources

Healthcare Identifiers Integration Toolkit v1.2

ID
EP-2610:2018
Type
Standard
Product
Version
1.2
Status
Active
The Healthcare Identifiers Integration Toolkit contains libraries for B2B connectivity to the Healthcare Identifiers service, used to search for IHI, HPI-Is and HPI-Os. The sample code and integration tools provided here should only be used in conjunction with the Agency's detailed specifications for the Healthcare Identifiers Service and, where appropriate…

Healthcare Identifiers Service - Support Documents v1.5

ID
EP-3921:2024
Type
Product
Version
1.5
Status
Active
The HI Service support documents on this page provide background and guidance for healthcare provider organisations, and conformance and accreditation requirements for software developers.   For more information, refer to the documents and specifications listed below and to:    Use of Healthcare Identifiers in Health Software Systems - FAQs…

Victoria IHI Pre-Implementation Project v1.0

ID
EP-1344:2011
Type
Product
Version
1.0
Status
Active
The primary objective of the Victorian IHI Pre-Implementation project is to develop a suite of system design artefacts to support integration of the national Individual Healthcare Identifier into health services’ patient administration systems. The project was conducted by the Department of Health, Victoria, under the HealthSMART program, and NEHTA…